Y’ever have one of those days when someone is in your senses? Heart-senses mostly, but also in the mind? Today I had a really brief phone call with someone I know, and I was very abrupt with her, just catching her up on some stuff, and then I needed to run – I was thirsty, very tired, and just generally exactly the opposite of how I was feeling the rest of the day: that this person was one of my best friends. The awareness of this fact was echoing through my soul for the rest of the day as I went shopping (Goodwill – found a little cd shelf that matches my other ones for under three bucks). Someone who not only appreciates a similar philosophical mental process as I enjoy, but also shares a groundedness that I find missing in others. Actually, I wouldn’t say that either I nor her are very “grounded” (she is more than me, through exercise, surely), but rather she knows how important it is for moments of physicality to remind us that we can make the most of this physical realm. That sounds like I’m speaking of the carnal stuff that comes with Spring, and to an extent I am, but I am not speaking of the sex itself, I am speaking of the sense that comes during it – that we are souls trapped in this physical world, and in the dance of destruction and creation that we call sex, we accept it (our physical bounds) while also knowing that we surpass it in most every way. Surpass it not in any way you’d notice, if you say had a videocamera aimed at it, but… hmm, I’ve exceeded my knowledge here. I should probably read up on tantric principles or something. Because I am not sure that we actually exceed our physical bounds when we have sex. Maybe we’re more like flies banging our heads against glass windows trying to be free. Maybe sex is sharing in the feeling of being trapped, letting down defenses while knowing we’re prisoners in a security pen. I don’t know. Maybe I should have some more to try to figure it out. I do know that sex helps balance out the spiritual.

But dominating this echo of recognition of how much I value my friend, there was the sense that there is someone who recognizes the world and our needs in the world (both spiritual and physical – both sides of the spectrum) in a way that is so similar to my own that we should, by all rights, be family (not to say that we don’t have a huge wealth of differences, that is true as well). Of course I can’t actually be family to her, marriage is not in my future with her (that spectrum I spoke of also needs a whole bunch of compatibility in the middle: shared sense of spirit and physical aren’t enough – practical considerations come up in the middle). But nonetheless, this feeling of appreciating that someone shares these two aspects of self is very strong today.

I’m now looking over these paragraphs and wondering if my view of sex is really wrong. Hm… Is sex not meant to be like prisoners sharing a sense of being trapped, and mutally trying to rise above the prison? That doesn’t sound too healthy, does it? I keep thinking of Callisto on Xena saying that sex in her view is a trick: “Love is a trick that nature plays on us to get us to reproduce.” She said love, but she was just being polite in her wording.

I really should read up on tantra. For all I know, perhaps the body is viewed as a prison in that philosophy, and the ecstasy that is thought to connect one with god is indeed the way of rising above it. But I think my view tinges the body with a bit more despair than is likely in that philosophy. Not sure.

Ok, it’s a few minutes later and I’m inclined to think that the very despair which I associate with physical life is also what makes heroes so appealing. I was thinking of Xena Warrior Princess (due to my use of the Callisto quote above) and I realized that the very sense of helplessness that comes with the physical world (i.e. the way we age and die, get diseases, and generally fall apart) is also why heros like Xena and Batman are sure powerful (and respected, by me) figures or archetypes: because they change things in the physical world. Also let me give a shout out to architects. They change things in the physical world, which is probably the hardest realm to change things in. The physical world is SLOW. We rely on concepts of heroes who can change things quickly, and on art, which transposes a fanciful concept of reality and makes it seem briefly to be real, to assure us that the physical world is not always as crappy as it often is.

Maybe in sex we realize that we (at least two people…ideally three so one can rest) are not all crappy. We have the power to change how we feel in dramatic, hormone induced ways. And sure it fades away, but like art we prove for a few minutes that the physical world can change thanks to the efforts of heroes (heroes being the people having sex). That sounds kinda positive, I’ll try to remember that next time. Sex = heroism.